'We think we’re unlocking a big district'

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Canada Nickel Company is seeing a lot of interest from American car companies in the carbon-neutral nickel it aims to produce at the proposed Crawford Nickel Project, 43 kilometres north of Timmins.

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'We think we’re unlocking a big district' Back to video

Demand for the mineral is predicted to double over the next decade, driven by the electric vehicle market, but the world’s largest nickel producers are politically volatile or carbon intensive, said Canada Nickel CEO Mark Selby at the State of Mining luncheon hosted by the Timmins Chamber on Thursday.

The world’s biggest nickel producers are Russia, Indonesia (whose production is controlled by China) and the Philippines, Selby said.

“We saw what happened in Europe with oil and a hostile country like Russia,” he said. “We’re starting to see the de-integration of global supply chains, and having Chinese-controlled supply is the last thing a lot of U.S. and European car makers are looking for right now.”

There is also a risk those governments could attempt to join together to control supply and prices to generate more revenue for themselves, Selby added.

“Indonesia floated the idea of creating an Organization of Nickel Exporting Countries. They grabbed the Canadian prime minister at the G20 back in Indonesia,” Selby said. “The Philippines is talking about making restrictions in terms of nickel supply available.”

Nickel is used to make stainless steel, which has made it a high growth market over the last half-century, Selby said. It is also used as the high-density metal that gives batteries their range.

Selby stated the demand for nickel globally is projected by some analysts to increase from 2.4 million tonnes in 2020 to 5.1 million tonnes by 2030. Two million will be met with increased production from Indonesia, leaving a half-a-million to a million-tonne gap that “has to come from somewhere,” Selby told The Daily Press in a follow-up phone call on Friday.

Canada has gone from supplying 80 per cent of the world market in 1960 to four per cent today.

Nickel production in Canada was 117,000 tonnes in 2021, as global demand keeps rising, added Selby.

Canada Nickel’s latest economic analysis results showed the Canada Nickel project north of Timmins would produce 42,000 tonnes of nickel a year.

In other words, “the global market needs 10 or 15 Crawfords in North America and Europe,” Selby explained.

To that end, in 2020 and 2021, Canada Nickel searched for and found a total of 20 potential nickel deposits in the area of the Crawford site, and have done 27 deals to put together a land package where he expects to develop “at least a half a dozen Crawfords lurking,” he said.

They have already had some exploration success at their Reid and Deloro properties, Selby said.

“These types of nickel deposits are the only source of nickel supply outside of Indonesia, and the great thing is we think there are a whole bunch of them, in and around the Timmins area,” he said, adding the area offers the benefit of infrastructure and mining talent.

Anglo American recently became a 10-per-cent shareholder in the project, a strong endorsement, Selby said. The global mining company based in London, UK, also agreed to purchase 10 per cent of the Crawford’s iron-chrome and carbon credits.

The Crawford Nickel Project has provided economic opportunity for the Mattagami First Nation and their partners.

“It’s nice to see a mining project that comes with a zero-carbon footprint,” said Tim Harvey, president and CEO of Mattagami First Nation. “It’s nice to see one of these projects that has a lot of potential that is environmentally-minded and has those solutions in place.”

“It’s great to see that the North is finally coming of age,” added Jerry Petruska, from Total Street Maintenance, a paving company that benefits from any economic growth in the community, he said.

Both Harvey and Petruska were among those who attended the luncheon held in the McIntyre Auditorium on Thursday.

Selby is banking on a carbon capture process to make the Crawford mine a zero-carbon operation, and make it even more attractive to investors and clients.

This process is made possible by the serpentine rock the deposit is found in. Selby calls it “our magic rocks,” because it has the ability to spontaneously absorb carbon dioxide when exposed to air.

A similar mineral sequestration process has been used on a large scale in Iceland to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and inject it into underground rock, he said.

Selby said he hopes the project will break ground in 2025, but the federal environmental impact assessment is still in its early stages, and could take up to four-and-a-half years, Impact Assessment Agency of Canada Project Manager Harry Keess told The Daily Press at a public information session on Wednesday at the Ramada Hotel.

At two virtual public sessions held in September of 2021, the public raised numerous concerns about the environmental destruction that would result from the building of a completely new mine, including the impact on the lake sturgeon population from effluent discharge in the Mattagami River.

Other concerns raised by the public regarded the effect of blasting on aquatic life, on human health from the inhalation of asbestos, and of habitat loss on migratory birds, among many others listed in the 13-page document.

When asked why he is so confident the Crawford Mine will break ground in 2025, Selby replied that his team has already done the background work to complete the impact statement, and aims to be “more than fully compliant with all of the air and water regulations to make sure we minimize our impact on the environment.”

The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada invites the public and Indigenous groups to review and provide feedback by 11:59 p.m. on March 8, on the draft Tailored Impact Statement Guidelines and the draft Public Participation Plan.

The public is invited to visit the project home page on the Canadian Impact Assessment Registry and searching for the reference number 83857.